African

“World Nomads,” a month-long festival by New York’s French Institute Alliance Française, fetes the cultural and intellectual renaissance of Tunisia two years after its Arab Spring, reports France-Amerique.

Feet in 2 Worlds heads to Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn where an enclave of West Africans flourish with restaurants, food stores and shops. A stop at an African buffet gives a taste of the diverse countries of the region.

Rap artists whose songs became anthems during the Arab Spring revolutions and ongoing struggles in North Africa and the Middle East will bring their words of politics and protest to the Brooklyn Academy of Music this week, reports the Brooklyn Ink.

After years of planning, New York’s first Afro-Brazilian institution – the Ofá Cultural Center – was finally born late last year. The center hopes to celebrate Brazil’s cultural diversity and ethnic richness through music, dance, food and literature events.

Brooklyn-based immigrants from Nigeria are struggling with the negative impact of religiously motivated violence in their home country, spearheaded by the Islamist militant movement Boko Haram, reports The Brooklyn Ink.

Two New York-based papers focusing on the black community, Our Time Press and Amsterdam News, used the occasion of the 41st annual International African Arts Festival earlier this month in Brooklyn’s Commodore Barry Park to reflect on black identity today in America.

When Black Star News, a small New York-based investigative site with an African perspective and a focus on Uganda, ran an editorial critical of the viral video “Kony 2012,” the website received more hits than it had ever experienced — and nearly crashed the server.

Here in New York, James Oladipo Buremoh drives one of the Gray Line New York Sightseeing buses, but back in his native Nigeria, the bus driver comes from royalty. In this audio slide show, Buremoh explains that he’s a king of his village, where people bow down and call him “your royal highness.”

In an impassioned editorial for Aramica, journalist Antoine Faisal condemned the Egyptian singer Tamer Hosny, who held a concert on Feb. 4 in Elizabeth, N.J., for his perceived collaboration with government forces in Tahrir Square during the Egyptian revolution.

If there’s one food item that could knit together all the immigrant communities of New York City, it would have to be Maggi, the ubiquitous seasoning sauce that’s fundamental to cuisines around the world. Aurora Almendral, a reporting fellow with Feet in 2 Worlds, explains its appeal.

The conversation on controversial proposed redistricting lines continued across New York City and its suburbs over the last few weeks, with hearings and protests by residents. Here is another sampling of coverage from the community and ethnic press.

As the White House urged Congress to withhold $600 million in nutrition assistance to Puerto Rico, officials responded angrily that this is only the latest in a series of President Trump’s attempts to stop the flow of federal aid to the island, El Nuevo Día reports. Political analyst Domingo Emanuelli found the Trump government's actions “barbaric,” and urged Puerto Rican Republicans to reconsider their allegiance. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz said: “I shouted against Trump’s abuses from the start while others were chummy with him. Trump is not the plantation owner and we are not his slaves.” Link to original story →

The Indigenous Peoples March being held in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 18, a day ahead of the Women's March, will bring together groups from Puerto Rico to South America and Central America, reports Remezcla, to focus attention on issues from voter suppression to human trafficking to police brutality to what is called an “environmental holocaust” by activists. “I think it’s a collective cry for help because we’re in a time of crisis that we have not seen in a very long time,” says Nathalie Farfan, an Ecuadorean Indigenous woman and event organizer. Link to original story →

After vowing to create a more inclusive school system in North Carolina, the Durham Board of Education introduced a new department of second language services to serve newly-arrived immigrants who don’t speak English as a first language, Qué Pasa Noticias reports. One of the main goals of the initiative will be to coordinate a translation and interpretation system to help families participate in their children’s education. “As our Latinx population keeps growing we keep opening our schools’ doors to those arriving from all over the world,” said Superintendent Pascal Mubenga. Link to original story →

With Sen. Kamala Harris expected to announce her decision on a presidential run, The American Bazaar asks members of the Indian-American community about the potential candidacy of the California native. While some celebrated the possibility of Harris, who is of Jamaican-Indian descent, running amid the current political atmosphere, others say the country is "still not ready for a female president and certainly not a non-white." Link to original story →